


Blue Stains on Red Sunflowers

by homodiageticnarrator



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: ANGST ANGST ANGST SO MUCH ANGST, Angst, Ed has nightmares, Fluff, M/M, Memory Loss, Past Child Abuse, Smut, and he thinks they are in a relationship, ed cant remember basically any of the beef with oswald, its complicated, this fic will get real dark real fast
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:15:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23381527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homodiageticnarrator/pseuds/homodiageticnarrator
Summary: It was an unusually warm winter morning when Ed realised that he had forgotten what his parents looked like.
Relationships: Oswald Cobblepot/Edward Nygma
Comments: 22
Kudos: 46





	1. Hilltop Elementary

**Author's Note:**

> ok i know there's a lot of stuff in this au, but bear with me, it'll be cool, ok, we can get through this. you'll catch the drift of the au, but just so you know, Oswald continues to be mayor even after Ed's vendetta against him, in this one. fight me idc. have fun.  
> also, I'm posting this kinda on a whim and will check the spelling later, sorry, still love you tho

It was an unusually warm winter morning when Ed realised that he had forgotten what his parents looked like.

He was sitting next to Oswald in the back of his black sedan, gazing out of the dark tinted windows, watching the streets of downtown Gotham zoom past.

He didn’t have any pictures of the people he supposed he must have called Mom and Dad once, just as he didn’t have any other pictures of his childhood as a whole. In fact, he didn’t have any physical proof of his childhood at all, no toys or participation trophies, except for the universal, indisputable knowledge that everyone who was an adult must have been a child once.

There weren’t any pictures of big grins next to Christmas trees or of new shoes and first day jitters, as Oswald had them, and Ed had never thought much about it. If he needed to remember something, so he had reckoned, he would just think back and remember it; and if he couldn’t remember, so he had concluded, it must not be worth remembering anyway.

The trouble was that he slowly came to realise that what he remembered was not nearly as much as a normal person would. Or, as Oswald would, that was.

Oswald owned hundreds of photos his mother had neatly glued into albums; his manor was covered in portraits upon portraits of his ancestors and there were countless of their journals in the library. And boring as they mostly were, they still displayed an abundance of details of childhood days spend by the lake house or youthful explorations in the family’s winter home.

Every morning at the breakfast table, Elijah Van Dahl’s piercing blue eyes were staring daggers in his back from his way too large, way too accurate portrait.

He supposed his father would look pretty similar to himself. It was simple genetics and the most logical conclusion. Brown eyes were a solid guess, but not a hundred percent statistically sound, since they were a dominant gene that could withstand generational gaps if it had to. Running his tongue along the sharp edges of his teeth, all slightly crooked and overlapping with each other, his eyes wandered down at his hand, long slender fingers resting next to Oswald’s, on the cushy black leather of the backrow seats. He had always wondered how they kept the leather so clean, no matter how much blood soaking into it the night before, it always returning nice and polished the next morning.

Ed could still remember how he himself had lain on them just a couple months ago, in agonizing pain as his muscles were literally defrosting like a chicken pot pie thawing before being put in the microwave, sending jolts of pain through his entire body, Oswald’s worried face only visible to him in between flashes of white, until the stabbing pain of a syringe in his thigh made everything fade to black, waking up hours, maybe days, later, in a warm bed, Oswald hovering in the doorframe but not stepping into the room.

 _what happened._ His voice croaky, belonging to someone else entirely.

 _you were frozen_. Oswald’s voice. Warm, familiar. Distant. Cautious. _you don’t remember?_

_you saved me?_

A sigh. _you have to sleep, okay?_

In the sedan, Ed was taking Oswald’s hand into his, silently playing with the other man’s fingers, looking at his rings. A silver band on his pinkie, one with purple stones on his middle finger. He felt the other man tense up at the touch, as he always seemed to do when Ed showed any kind of affection, came too close, when they talked for too long, when they got on too well.

_you don’t understand, Ed. You don’t remember what happened._

_then tell me._

_I can’t._

Oswald pacing around the bedroom as he was drifting in and out of sleep, the pain killers burying him in a cloud of welcome numbness. Doctors coming and going, asking him questions: _What’s your name, do you know what city you are in, do you know where you are right now._ And he was able to answer all of them correctly - _Edward Nygma, Gotham City, Van Dahl Mansion_ – like a child being proud for acing a test that every adult in the room knew was several grade levels below what they should be capable of by now, Oswald standing by the bedside, hands anxiously fiddling with whatever they could find, dark-rimmed eyes looking past him, out of the window, as he recited every one of his duties as Oswald’s chief of staff to prove he still remembered everything.

The only thing he got wrong was the date. He got it wrong by about a year, six months of which he had been frozen. It didn’t bother him too much because how much could realistically have changed if he found himself still being in his old bedroom, still with his best friend.

-

Pressing Oswald’s knuckles to his lips, he let the other man’s hand go again. “Are you nervous?” he asked, solely to fill the silence.

“Not particularly.” Oswald’s voice was quiet, far away.

“I am a little bit,” Ed admitted.

It was Ed’s first official outing back in duty as chief of staff. Nothing fancy, nothing even where anyone would look twice at him, Oswald being the star. Just a visit to a school, still he felt jittery.

Ed had been continuing his career as chief of staff for a little over a week now, but, if he was honest, he wasn’t finding it as easy as he used to.

Schedules upon schedules for meetings, photoshoots, interviews, all quickly following after another, having to take into account the time it took to get from one place to the other, all while prioritising the most important and knowing when to make time for the criminal underground activities and how not to make their involvement in it obvious.

Hours upon hours it took Ed what he used to do on the fly, in his head. Sitting at his desk every evening until late into the night, trying to fit all of it into the agenda, trying to make sense of how to plan things right. Going over the calendar again and again, erasing and rewriting, all in the dim light of a candle, not wanting to turn on the electric light and draw attention to the fact that he was still awake.

-

Oswald had finally fessed up about three weeks after saving him, bursting into Ed’s room as he was doing some walking exercises with his physiotherapist Dan, a youngish man who was very insistent on positive reinforcement. Startled by the noise, Ed had toppled over and crashed into the bookcase, falling face first onto the hardwood floor, taking down Edgar Allen Poe and Ernest Hemingway with him.

 _great try, Ed!_ A thumbs up from Dan.

 _I need to tell you something._ Oswald standing in the doorframe, as if ready to run away again even while just walking normally would be enough to outrun Ed in the condition he was in.

Still lying on the floor, trying to get up but arms burning with pain. _shoot._

_it’s important._

_so I gather._

_before…- before this. We- I-_ Hesitant glances towards Dan, who was slowly walking away, edging out of the door, past Oswald. _I need you to know what happened. I just want you to know- that- well, I think it all began when I told you._

 _told me what._ Ed finally able to hoist his body back into a standing position, clinging to the wooden bedframe to hold himself up.

Oswald’s face burning red, his eyes closed as if facing a bomb about to explode, too late to run away. _That I love you._

 _oh._ Ed’s head aching, feeling blood starting to run down his chin, his nose bleeding from the fall.

_of course I don’t anym-_

_I love you too, Oswald._

Silence followed. Oswald’s eyes open again but staring at Ed’s nose rather back into his eyes.

_you don’t. Not in that way._

A clumsy step towards Oswald before pressing his lips on his, metallic taste of sleeping pills and blood in both of their mouths.

-

After this, Ed had joined the dots, gathering that they must have been in a relationship before he had been frozen, Oswald no doubt so insistent on keeping his distance and them sleeping in different rooms because he was afraid Ed had forgotten his feelings for him or because he was so used to Ed showing affection that it didn’t give him butterflies anymore. Yet, Ed felt his adoration towards the other man as strong as ever, even stronger than the first time he had seen him at the GCPD.

Letting his head sink down on Oswald’s shoulder, he closed his eyes. While, just a couple of years ago, perhaps, nightmares had been an emotional and earth-shattering experience to him, they were now part of the gloomy reality of his everyday life.

Just one more of the horrors of his daily life, slowly slipping into the mundane with every day that passed after Ms Kringle’s death.

They - the nightmares that is - had usually been linked to his other self, Ed never being able to be sure if they had been real dreams or actual things he had done while the ‘other Ed’ had been in charge. Neither did he know whether the other Ed felt the same way every time Ed himself was able to control their body.

But he hoped that he did, because he did not want to be the only one that was left with the pain that manifested in those dreams.

Those dreams had been pervaded by darkness. A deep black, disorientating darkness that spun your head into a sickening vertigo. It felt like strings were pulling at your limbs, your ears ringing with the over-powering sound of homicidal laughter.

While being frozen and then unfrozen had been the cause of unbearable pain that had made him feel like dying was the better option any day than to have to go through it again, it had done something to his brain that had seemingly made the other Ed disappear and his nightmares change.

Now, they were just kind of…confusing, really.

They weren’t tinged in darkness anymore but oversaturated with colour.

After he had woken up from the other Ed taking over his body, at least he had always known exactly who he was and what he wanted. The nightmares had been a horrible experience, but after he had woken up, they had been in the past.

The new nightmares lingered on his mind and made his head hurt.

“Are you alright?” Oswald asked, a cool hand brushing his hair out of his face before resting on his forehead to check his temperature, Ed’s stomach fluttering at the gentle touch. “We can go home again if you don’t feel well.”

Ed shook his head, face buried in Oswald’s shoulder, feeling the soft fabric of his suit, taking in the scent of his Eau de Cologne, while Oswald ran his fingers through his hair.

“We’re here, Mr Mayor,” they were interrupted by the chauffeur, Oswald stiffening again, moving in his seat so that Ed had to lift his head again.

"Don't touch me in front of the others, okay?"

-

“Shit, he looks terrible!”

“Thanks, Victor,” Ed said after having strenuously managed to get out of the car.

“Wasn’t meant as a compliment,” the assassin answered, innocently nursing a milkshake.

Although Ed, now more than ever, avoided looking at himself in the mirror, he knew that Victor was right. Occasional glimpses of himself in metallic barf bowls and silver spoons used for his medicine had revealed to him the large, raw, almost greyish bruise that spread over his left cheek and could only be described as ‘freezer burn’ by even the best of doctors. He had similar bruises all over his body, yet this one was the most prominent, impossible to hide and making his face appear even paler and the shadows under his eyes even darker.

“Where’d you leave your hat anyway?” Victor asked, Ed looking behind himself to make sure he was still talking to him.

“… my hat?”

“Oh man, you really did a number on this one, boss. I mean I tried this stuff with Butch but -” Victor said, turning to Oswald and stopping midsentence as he saw the man glowering at him.

“Ed, do you mind going inside and checking if everyone’s ready?”

“Yeah, sure,” Ed said uncertainly, stumbling towards the entrance.

-

In the school, no one was ready.

In fact, no one was even in the hallway. Normally there’d always be a welcoming committee, sometimes even with a children’s choir or some other shit Oswald hated, but this time there was just silence, disturbed by occasional screams coming out of the classroom.

Not knowing what to do, Ed strolled around the entry way, every move still hurting, picking at loose thread of his sleeve, looking at the clumsily-made drawings that hung on big pinboards on the walls.

It was almost the end of the term and it really showed in the haphazardly drawn stick figures and fields of grass with pink blotches as flowers on them. The longer you walked down the corridor, the older the drawings got, showing the still motivated dog pictures kids had drawn at the beginning of the school year and the failed crafting attempts of past generations.

As Ed found himself having wandered all the way down a corridor, he encountered an already dusty pinboard with a note ‘THIS IS ME!’ and a bunch of self-portraits pinned underneath.

While there were some pretty good tries, many laughing smiley faces with rectangle houses in the background with triangle roofs, one kid, ‘AverY, MS EmilY’s ClasS’, had, apart from their artistic-adventurous way of spelling, drawn nothing at all, their piece of paper still stark white, but still hanging there amongst the others. In turn, another kid hadn’t bothered writing their name down at all, their drawing showing a cube, nothing less and nothing more.

Ed stepped closer, looking at the geometrically correctly placed straight lines and the neat shading. It definitely wasn’t a hard thing to draw, not really worth of admiration, yet he felt weirdly proud of that unknown child and their ability to use a ruler, in contrast to all the other kids in their class.

He turned around as he heard the familiar sound of Oswald’s cane hitting the linoleum floor, another voice already greeting him enthusiastically.

“Mayor Cobblepot! It’s a pleasure!” an elderly, brightly smiling man, standing next to a very bored-looking group of kids, said, extending his hand to Oswald, as Ed walked up beside him.

“Oh, likewise!”, Oswald said with what Ed recognised as his most annoyed, but at the same time most charming smile, shaking his hand.

“Mr Sowerby, the principal,” Ed mumbled quickly and maybe a little too loudly, only just able to remember the man from a photo he had seen last night when trying to prepare for this.

“You know, I’ve always wanted to meet you, Mr Sowerby,” Oswald said, without hesitating.

“Really?” the older man asked, seeming flattered but sceptical at the remark

“Oh, yes. Your school is one of the oldest in town. A landmark, really. Generation upon generation of Gotham’s citizens went here and are now upright-standing citizens because of it,” Oswald elaborated, with a smile on his lips. “Not to forget, very smart citizens, since they voted for me, of course,” he closed, giving the principal a chummy little wink.

“Oh, indeed!” Mr Sowerby agreed. “In fact, I brought you our best and brightest right here,” he gestured at the group of kids that was surrounding him, one of the girls busy shoving a jelly bean up her nose while her friend was egging her on, the other kids suspiciously eyeing Ed and Oswald. Mr Sowerby either didn’t seem to notice, or, most probably, just ignored it.

“This is our dear 6th grade, our oldest and wisest. And Matthew here,” he introduced one boy, nodding for him to step forward, “has something very special for you.”

Matthew was a pudgy twelve-year-old with a present in his hands and an attitude in his heart. “Here,” he said unceremoniously, adding an unneeded, “we bought this for you,” as he offered the present to Oswald. Before he could grab it, Victor Zsasz snatched it out of his hands.

“It’s just a box of chocolates…”, Mr Sowerby said sheepishly, looking at Ed for the first time since they had started this excruciating exchange of niceties, while Matthew’s eyes were nearly falling out of his skull, as Victor’s sleeve slipped, revealing his scars, as he unpacked the present and popped a handful of pralines into his mouth. “Better safe than sorry,” he said to the kid, the chocolate glued to his teeth.

-

Did school teach kids anything anymore?

Apparently not.

Ed was sitting in the back of the auditorium, watching Oswald answer questions on stage like this was some goddamn anti-kidnapping or anti-drugs or anti-whatever assembly.

“Do you…- Are you gonna build some new uhhh playgrounds?” a small second grader was currently asking, standing on his tip toes to reach the microphone that someone could easily just adjust to his height, but no adult apart from Mr. Sowerby apparently having had the motivation to even show up.

“Yes yes, certainly!” Oswald answered enthusiastically, although Ed knew that all the funds for that endeavour had already been spend on new barstools for the Iceberg Lounge.

He knew that because he had bought them himself.

Blending out the voices as unnecessary background noise, Ed was taking the moment as a rare occasion to relax his mind and to just look around, trying not to worry about the next thing on the agenda.

It was a rather sad-looking school and therefore an even more sad-looking auditorium. The about one hundred seats were made of grey plastic, cheap and durable, but also very dreary and uncomfortable. Over the years, generations of kids had scribbled on them, broken off bits and pieces and even burned some of the edges with a lighter.

The floor leading up to the stage was covered in a dark red carpet, no doubt an attempt to create a cinema-like atmosphere, but a failed attempt nonetheless, since the carpet seemed to never have been professionally cleaned since it had been laid out. Now, it was covered in 50 years’ worth of dust from children’s shoes, spat out gum, lost hair ties and little pieces of paper that had once been notes students had passed to each other and then abandoned on the ground.

The stage that Oswald was currently standing on, monologuing about public health care, was elevated from the ground (as stages usually are) and in the background hung two big yellow curtains, while an American flag stood on the right side, by the stairs.

Inspecting the back of the seat in front of him, somebody having etched their initials into the plastic, in the reflection that the shiny grey material provided, Ed noticed Mr Sowerby watching him. Slowly, he turned around, looking back at the other man, hands back to fidgeting with the loose thread.

They both didn’t say anything for a long time, the background filled with kids asking and Oswald answering. Then, finally, Mr Sowerby spoke up.

“Say, where did you go to school, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I went to Gotham University; I majored in Forens-“

“Oh no, I mean elementary school. Which one did you attend?”

“Oh,” Ed was taken aback for a moment. “I..-,“ he started trying to think back, trying to remember.

It was just that…he couldn’t.

Just like with his father’s face, he couldn’t remember.

And it scared him more than forgetting the entire last year of his life had.

The man didn’t even seem to notice, still intently looking at Ed. “It was a long time ago. You just…- you do so look like him."

“Like whom?”

“Like our Eddie,” he said. “Edward Nashton.”


	2. Cobalt Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fire. There was a fire.

Up until this night, Ed didn’t think he had ever realised just how trashed Gotham’s streets were. 

They were dark and desolate, sure.

Very high risk of getting robbed, even higher risk of getting shot.

But they were also dirty.

Someone should do something about that.

Not the mayor, surely, but someone.

Driving by, he hadn’t noticed the area the school was in, but now, dragging his shoe over the rough cement ground, trying to scrape the remnants of what he supposed had used to be a dead rat but was now dirt on his shoes, off the sole, it made him feel increasingly uneasy.

Oswald had been more than reluctant to even let him go, having lingered in front of the door of the filing room that Ed was ransacking, before he had to get to the weekly meeting of the gang bosses. Ed had just told him that he wanted to look for information about the school that they could use as blackmail later. What information that might be and why they would ever need to blackmail an elementary school, he had conveniently avoided answering.

Oswald hadn’t asked anyway, he had just looked worried.

He looked worried a lot lately.

After he hadn’t found anything in the cabinets, Ed had turned to the old raggedy computer in the school library. 

The first record of the Nashton family name was found in Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1871. 

There were 116 historical documents. 

Among them 59 birth, marriage, and death certificates. 

5 military records, 13 immigration records. 

44 census and voter lists.

Robert Nashton, born in Minnesota, no kids, has bought a new car last month and is behind on his insurance payments.

Alice Nashton, having come to the USA in 1823, moved to Colorado and then died in a tragic accident, which, apparently, according to some weird true crime website and a pay-to-view-more preview of an article, involved both a chicken and a kaleidoscope. Ed decided he didn’t need to spend the thirty dollars on a yearly subscription to know more.

There were no records of any Nashtons ever having come near Gotham, not to mention living there.

No Edward Nashton.

No nothing.

While it did have its perks to be the mayor’s righthand man, like gaining access to this room with no questions asked, it didn’t matter much when you don’t find what you are looking for.

Except that he didn’t even know what he was looking for.

So now he was walking down the dark streets of Gotham, searching for the only address that could maybe help him: Mr Sowerby’s. 

Although it was barely five o’clock, winter’s darkness had already claimed the streets as its own, the unusual warmness the sun had provided long gone by now.

He should have just asked him at the school.

He should have just taken that old guy hostage right then and there and tortured the answer out of him.

Or maybe he would have just told him if he had asked.

But he couldn’t have just asked, right?

He’d look like an idiot.

Like an idiot who didn’t even know where he went to primary school.

This whole thing was ridiculous, honestly.

How many Edwards were there in the world? Millions upon millions. 

Ridiculous.

-

Kicking an abandoned soda can, making it spin and splutter its contents into all directions, he walked past row after row of houses with chipping facades and withered front yards. 

But there weren’t any children in the streets, anyway. In fact, there were hardly any signs that anyone was living in this street. 

There were signs that people had lived there, yes. Graffitis on the walls, bike frames locked to fences with the tires stolen, chewing gum glued to the steet.

But no people.

No kids playing, no adults yelling, no cars driving through. 

Mostly just closed windows with the shutters drawn.

Mr Sowerby’s house, according to the records, was number 37c. Like any other house in the street, it was rundown, but showed some signs of good will. 

A welcome mat with a little happy hedgehog, a dream catcher on the door. 

Ed knocked on the door and, like in a bad horror movie, it easily gave in, the door creaking open.

“Hello?” Ed yelled, uncreatively. 

No one answered.

“Mr Sowerby?” Ed tried again, impatiently stepping inside of the house. 

The lights were turned on, illuminating a narrow hallway leading into a small living room with an adjoined kitchen area, some stairs leading upstairs. On the coffee table stood a little place mat, a knife and fork neatly beside it, as if straightened with a ruler. Turning towards the kitchen, Ed saw its promised contents, a microwaveable meal, standing in front of the microwave, thick droplets of condensed water running down the cellophane. 

The microwave, meanwhile, was turned on, a dark brown substance oozing out of it, while producing a steady humming noice, the little dial on the side ticking towards zero. As Ed stepped closer, he reached his fingers out to touch the substance, jumping at the harsh ding noise was produced by the machine as the dial hit its mark. 

Slowly, he opened the latch, before stumbling back, crashing into the kitchen island. 

Looking back at him was Mr Sowerby’s severed head.

-

Fire.

There was a fire.

Heat was hitting his face in waves, like a whip, painfully colliding with his cheek, his eyes, his forehead.

He was standing on a wooden staircase that would soon collapse into itself, the world spinning and spinning. Triangle shapes spinning into circles, reflecting the bright pink countertop and the orange chairs in the kitchen. 

Yellow Hexagons, turquoise nonagons, red parallelograms and beige octagons swirling and swirling around, always changing, but always staying together.  
And the fire.

The aquamarine flames taking over the hallway in front of him, indigo sparks sputtering onto his clothes, teal walls of fire getting closer and closer to the stove, where he knew it would explode in a splendour of navy and jade flashes.

It was stunning.

And it was suffocating him.

Quick breaths in and out that only made his chest hurt more and more.

No oxygen.

The fire consuming and consuming and consuming it. More and more and more and more.

He looked down, trying to see how long the fire would take till it reached him, but his eyes stopping at his own hands. His hands, the same hands, but smaller, much smaller, the hands of a child. They were terribly wet, terribly sticky, the substance a bright cobalt blue yet unmistakeably blood.

The smoke slowly clouding his vision, clouding the shapes, the colours.

Ed felt himself choking, his breath wheezing, his chest hitching.

He heard a voice that came from his own body but that didn’t belong to him scream.

He heard it call a name that he couldn’t properly understand because of the earth-shattering noise of a wooden beam, corroded by flames, hitting the floor.

A violent coughing fit shook his body, shaking it around, the heat still hitting and hitting his skin.

“Ed! Ed, wake up!” a voice pulled him back into the real world, followed by a slap in the face.

A deep breath like he was emerging from deep waters made him sit up, staring back at Oswald, before he put his hand on his cheek, where Oswald’s hand imprint was still burning red marks into his flesh.

“I’m sorry,” Oswald said. He was wild eyed, dressed in his pyjamas. “It’s just that you were choking, and I tried to wake you up, but you just wouldn’t!” he said, grabbing his own hand, obviously trying to stop it from shaking.

“I…-”, Ed mumbled, trying to gather his thoughts, his head aching, his chest still racing, running his hands through his hair, feeling the sweat pooling from his forehead.

“You’re burning up,” Oswald said, "This was a bad idea. You shouldn't have come outside today."

Ed didn't listen, looking at his own hands. Dry. Normal-looking.

“I'll call the doctor,” he heard Oswald say, his voice sounding drowned out and damped.

“It’s the middle of the night...," Ed mumbled, reaching over the bed to take Oswald's hand into his, trying to calm him down, but he only startled at the touch.

“You shouldn't have wandered around outside all alone today,” Oswald snapped, pressing his eyes shut, massaging his temples. He opened his mouth, as if to add something, but closed it again without saying anything. “Just…- Rest now, okay?” He finally said, before pulling his hand away, leaving behind a void, before walking out of the room.

Back alone, Ed tried to calm down, tried to breathe in and out like Dan had taught him.

Closing his eyes.

In and out.

He saw Mr Sowerby's head in front of him again.

In

And

Out.

He saw hands that were his own but weren't, bloodsoaked.

In and in and in and in.

He saw the fire.

He heard the screams.

Out and out and – he felt his stomach turning, only able to turn his head away from the clean white sheets before he started retching.


	3. The Freezer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The floor of Ed’s bathroom looked as if you had locked three addicts into a kitchen and told them to make methamphetamine with whatever they could find.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> self-isolation is bad for the psyche but good for writing angst

Ed was woken up again by being jerked back and forth, one hand around each of his upper arms, oddly able to completely enclose them. “Hey!” a hushed voice whispered, sounding somewhat muffled. Feeling his chest tightening, Ed blinked to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He wasn’t in the Van Dahl Mansion anymore, as much was clear enough, although he also couldn’t make out much of the room he was in, the room illuminated only by a TV flickering and coloring the room in different colors with every jump cut as the host of a gameshow was running up and down the stage with a microphone in his hand, chattering on and on but no sound reaching Ed’s ears.

His head ached terribly, everything around him seeming like it was glossed over by colors that were way too bright, changing way too rapidly. He found that he was lying on a mattress that lay on the floor of what seemed to be a cellar, the walls stretching up high, two small windows right at the top, far out of reach. It was pitch dark outside, only some dim light coming through from what he supposed were streetlights.

“Get down!” the hushed voice – a man’s – urged him, grabbing his arm again and yanking off of the mattress before pulling him down, both of them lying on the floor. Ed felt his hands shaking, his heart starting to race so much it made his chest ache. “Mask! Where’s your mask?!” the man asked, being so close that they were practically shoulder to shoulder. He was wearing a gas mask and although, objectively, he seemed relatively thin and unthreatening, he seemed so tall, so undefeatable to Ed, it made him realize he was the other him again. The other other him. The child.

“Eddie, put your fucking mask on, they’re coming, and they have fucking poison gas,” the man said impatiently, still cowering on the floor behind the mattress, eyes fixed on one of the windows, a shadow suddenly passing it. His hands still shaking, Ed started to look around the room, rummaging through the sheets, franticly searching, only stopping as he noticed a plasticky underlining under the sheets, his hand recoiling as his fingers touched a big wet spot.

Suddenly, a gunshot rang through the house.

“Fuck,” the man muttered, jumping back up before trying to grab Ed, accidentally yanking him up by his hair, Ed shrieking in pain. The man didn’t seem to notice, even as the single strands of pulled-out red hair were still poking out of his balled-up fist and as Ed looked back at him with his lip quivering, arms wrapped around himself.

“They’re here,” he said, Ed’s heart dropping. “You know what to do.”

Ed’s legs were shaking now that he was standing, feeling like they were about to give in any second. He shook his head.

“Come on,” the man said sternly. “It’s broken, it’s fine,” he added, more softly.

Slowly, Ed walked to the corner of the room, hands clenched, and elbows pressed to his sides, hands jammed into his armpits, flinching as he heard a scuffle upstairs, loud clonking sounds coming from upstairs as different flashes of color were still covering every inch of the room with every second of every weak step he took. He stopped at a big white box, little hands with dirty fingernails opening the heavy lid, before he swung his skinny leg over the edge, climbing inside, the man stepping closer again, holding the lid open for him.

Inside of the box, he finally realised what it was. A freezer. His legs were pressed against his chest, his arms wrapped around them, the back of his shirt already soaked in condensation water that had been on the back wall. He sat pressed against the corner, the rest of the freezer filled with Tupperware containers of all shapes and sizes, all filled to the brim with a blue substance that shone through the thick, half-translucent plastic.

“You do not move, you do not make a sound, is that clear?!” The man was looking down at him, lit up by the light behind him, looking almost like a ghost.

He nodded.

“And tell me again, what happens if they find you?”

“They’ll cut off my fingers and then my toes, make me eat them and then they’ll lock me up and watch me starve,” he answered, automatically, voice unbearably high, unbearably weak.

“That’s right. Better be quiet, huh?” The man said, voice shaking as if he was laughing behind the mask, before letting the lid fall shut. “See ya later, Baby Blue.” 

-

The floor of Ed’s bathroom looked as if you had locked three addicts into a kitchen and told them to make methamphetamine with whatever they could find: Cinnamon spilled all over the tiles, mixing with honey and salt.

Ed was in the shower, as he had been for the last hour, first to wash the vomit off of his face, now to meticulously rub the contents of Oswald’s pantry into his hair.

He had consulted all the books about good haircare he had been able to find in the Van Dahl’s library (surprisingly many) and his own ‘scientist’ mind (unsurprisingly devoid of ideas) on how he could get hair dye out of his hair, his mind transfixed on the strands of red hair he had seen in his dream.

The short answer was: He couldn’t.

The answer he chose to believe in was: Just try anything and everything.

First, he rubbed lemon into his hair.

A burning sensation, the juice first refusing to leave its home before splattering out in a sudden burst, running down into his eyes and the bruise on his face.

Then followed baking soda, the powder sticking to the lemon juice and coloring his hair and whole forehead white, slowly building up into thick, disgusting chucks that fell heavy to his feet.

Chamomile tea.

A welcome liquid not really doing much actual rinsing but giving the hope that it might, instead just leaving you with a heavy smell of grandma who has disgusting, teeth-shattering caramels in her purse.

Dish soap.

The closest thing to actual shampoo in the process, yet the most far from it, the thick substance running down Ed’s face in slow and heavy drops, while helplessly foaming, at least taking out more of the baking soda.

Honey.

The worst. Just absolutely the worst idea ever.

Sea salt.

Cutting into his skin and burying itself deep under his fingernails as he massaged it in his hair, until it dropped down, mixed with the other substances, temporarily blinding him.

Cinnamon.

Something that had to be blindly reached for, after the salt incident, the lid askew as the thick powder rained down on his helpless body.

Laundry detergent.

A last attempt, not even sure where he read about it. At this point, nothing could worsen the situation anyway. Burned a little but otherwise okay.

After mixing all the things into his hair, he rinsed it for what felt like an hour and was actually two, just standing under the stream of water, his hands throbbing with pain at having to hold them up all the time, eyes tightly shut.

Then, as he got outside, he put some new pajamas on and wandered out of the room, not even looking at the mirror.

He wasn’t sure if he could stand looking at himself and seeing that nothing had actually happened.

-

Ed had never been in Oswald’s bedroom.

Or rather, he did not remember ever having been in Oswald’s bedroom, but he was certain that he had been lots of times.

He was sure that he would recognize it instantly.

That he would feel his heart warm (and maybe his groin too, just a little bit), as memories would come rushing back.

Standing in the doorframe of said room, none of this happened.

The room was gorgeous, of course.

But unfamiliar.

High ceilings with a big silver chandelier hanging from it. The walls were painted in a tasteful dark purple color with expensive paintings in big frames hanging on them. The floor made of dark wood.

Next to the door was a big fireplace, made of black marble, a couple of photos - one of grown-up Oswald with his father and one of child Oswald with his mother - as well as Oswald’s framed sanity certificate standing on the mantle, a big mirror with a thick, elaborate frame hanging above it. Opposite to the fireplace, on the other side of the room, stood a king-sized bed with the king of Gotham in it, hidden under thick, warm blankets that rose through steady breaths. Stepping closer, Ed ran his fingers over scattered coins on the nightstand, next to an array of business cards and an empty bottle of Scotch.

Standing next to Oswald’s sleeping body, Ed silently looked down, hands fiddling with the hem of his shirt. He half wished that Oswald would just wake up and see him, half wished that he had the courage to turn around and go back to his own bed.

Except that his own bed was covered in vomit.

Carefully, he sat down on the edge of the bed, taking a deep breath, the silence filled only by the sound of Oswald’s calm breathing.

He didn't know why he had come here, there were plenty of vacant guest rooms he could use, as well as the couch.

Still, he only wanted to be here.

With Oswald.

Sitting there, he felt the aching in his legs again, the fever in his bones. Chewing on his lip, he stared down at his empty palms, trying to put the events in order, tried to make sense of it all.

How had his life spun out of control so fast.

Or had it never been in control.

He didn’t remember any of these things. He didn’t remember remembering them before he had been frozen. But he didn’t know if he would.

He didn’t know who killed Mr. Sowerby. Or why. If it had something to do with him. Whether he should feel guilty about it.

His gaze wandered over to Oswald.

He wanted to remember so bad.

Wanted to remember his touch on his skin.

Wanted to remember tired kisses in the morning and heated kisses at night.

Wanted to remember how it felt to rest his head against his chest, how it sounded to hear his heartbeat.

And instead he got this.

Dreams that screamed at him with their violent, endless array of colors.

Dreams that made his head ache and his ears ring.

Dreams that he wished could be forgotten but that he desperately wanted to remember, to sort, to puzzle together.

He reached out, softly running his thumb over Oswald’s bottom lip, fingers tingling with desire before a hand grabbed his wrist, pulling his body down, Oswald pressing a knife to his neck that he seemed to have pulled out from under his pillow.

“It’s me! It’s Ed!” Ed yelled in panic, seeing Oswald’s eyes adjusting to the darkness and his grip on his wrist loosening as he let the knife sink.

“Ed?” He asked, as if he had not only never heard of such a person but in fact had never even considered the idea of such a person existing. He rubbed his eyes, looking back at him. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

How would he even begin to explain the sinking feeling in his chest he got every time he wasn’t distracted, when he realized that he knew nothing, that he didn’t know how to be the person he really was anymore.

How could he tell Oswald to his face that, despite all the money he was spending on him, for medication, for doctors, for suits, for utilities, he was unable to do the bare minimum, he was unable to think clearly, unable to fucking sleep without being more exhausted afterwards.

How should he tell Oswald that saving him had been a mistake, that he wasn’t the man he loved anymore, but a stranger again, even to himself.

But Oswald already knew all of this.

He saw it every time Oswald avoided looking him into his eyes.

He felt it every time Oswald tensed up at his touch.

He heard it every time Oswald stammered as he asked him to talk about the time they had been together, the time that Ed had forgotten but that he felt Oswald was mourning the death of.

Now he was just ugly Ed, pale and sickly, scarred with fucking freezer burn on his face.

Ed who choked during his nightmares at night, apparently being so loud that Oswald could hear him from rooms away.

Ed who had fevers, who threw up all over the bed.

A liability, that was what he really was and what he always would be, from now on.

“You okay?” Oswald asked, but his voice was so gentle and his eyes were so caring, it physically hurt Ed.

“Yes,” Ed answered, hearing his own voice callously betraying him as it broke, giving in to a hitched breath, tasting blood on his lips from digging his teeth into it to stop himself from tearing up.

Confusedly glancing around as if looking for answers anywhere but in Ed’s face, Oswald sat up, clumsily touching Ed’s arm after putting the knife aside. Ed was able to smell the heavy alcohol on his breath. “Is it the fever?” Oswald asked, his voice full of uncertainty.

Ed shook his head, staring past Oswald, counting the glistening stones that were bedazzled on the bed’s headboard. They were silent for a long time, before Ed spoke again. “I feel hollow,” he said so quietly, he wasn’t sure Oswald would even be able to hear. “I feel like I am just the shell of the person I am supposed to be and that I forgot how to be that person,” he said with such a certainty it scared him.

Oswald didn’t answer, didn't look at him. Then, quietly, “You’re Ed.”

Ed shrugged in response. What did it really mean to be Ed if he couldn’t remember who Ed was past the shallow last years at the GCPD. What did it really mean to be Ed if he was scared to remember, if he just knew something had happened but he didn’t want to know what, didn’t want to comprehend it, didn’t want to enter the high-walled infinite prison of directed thought about his past, about his childhood.

“Listen.” Oswald’s voice was stronger now, more determined. “You are Edward Nygma, okay? See, come on, uhm,” he thought for a moment. “What is something that belongs to you but other people use it more than you do?” He asked, finally looking back at him, proudly smiling as if he was sure he had solved the problem by asking the riddle, as if he just knew this would remind Ed of who he was.

Which only made it hurt worse as Ed was forced to watch the smile fade as he was unable to come up with the answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok who knows the answer to Oswald's riddle? I got it from a website called like "3000 super easy riddles for kids" and couldn't solve a single one.
> 
> (it's "your name")


	4. The Golden Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That night was different.
> 
> That night, for the first time, Ed remembered.
> 
> He remembered Avery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not even gonna make excuses, sorry for not updating! Thanks for all your comments, they really kept me going, y'all are so sweet! Enjoy the chapter x

That night was different.

That night, for the first time, Ed remembered.

He remembered Avery.

He found himself in an ordinary kid’s bedroom, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Twin bed with spaceship sheets, posters of some gameshow and some playbills stuck to the walls with tape, toys on the floor.

The room was filled with noise: 90s pop blaring from a radio downstairs and his own hands on an old, battered keyboard, carefully and slowly pushing down the keys, one at a time with his index finger.

Meanwhile, Avery sat at a little wooden desk in front of him, wild dark hair falling over their eyes, the desk scattered with bright crayons, the child holding a pencil, running it over the paper ever so softly that it only left the slightest indication of a grey line.

He didn’t know who Avery was.

He didn’t know anything about Avery.

Yet he knew, unmistakeably, that this child was Avery.

Sitting at the desk.

Legs that didn’t quite reach the floor yet swinging back and forth.

Little grey sneakers, the sole broken and coming off, stars clumsily drawn on the dirty fabric in blotchy, blue ink, flying through the air.

It was the first dream he had that wasn’t in abstract shapes or weird colors.

The sounds were clear.

The colors were dim and real.

Everything was calm and static.

Then, Avery's blue eyes looking back at him, one of them framed in a dark bruise. “I just don’t get why you won’t show me how to do it...”

“Because it’s stupid and it’s no fun at all,” Ed heard himself answer, pushing down another key, instantly knowing that it was the wrong one but not knowing which other one was right to continue playing the song.

“No, it’s not. It’s cool,” Avery disagreed.

“It sucks.”

“Please, Blue!”

“I told you not to call me that!”

“Why? It’s awesome! Everybody at school thinks it’s cool too. They all wanna be your friend now!” Avery begged.

“Bullshit, they just want free stuff. They don’t really mean it.”

“Yes-huh, they do!”

“Nu-huh!”

“Yes-huh!”

“What about your dad?”

Avery looked agitated. “What about him? He’s an arsehole.”

“If I show you, he’ll flip.”

“We won’t tell him.”

“He’ll know,” Ed mumbled, looking back down at the keyboard, trying to finish the song he had been playing, testing all of the keys to try to find the right one before he answered. “You solve it yet?” He tried to change the subject, glancing back up at Avery, who was drawing again and only shrugged in response.

“You wanna play dress-up?”

This got Avery’s attention.

“Fuck yes!” The little child jumped up from the chair and ran past Ed, out of the room. As Ed followed him, he wished he would stop so he could see better as they passed the framed family pictures and other things on the walls that Ed couldn’t quite make out as he ran past, only flashes of red hitting his eye.

In the room which he supposed was his parents’ bedroom, there stood an old vanity made of dark wood that Avery immediately ran towards, scattered on it was a bunch of makeup, most of it covered in a thick layer of dust, only the things Avery voraciously gathered up still looking shiny from the grease of fingers.

As Ed stood still for a moment, he realized the red flashes were sunflowers with red petals in all shapes and sizes, made out of all kinds of different materials: They hang on the walls, as paintings on canvasses and metal signs, they hang from the curtain rod as glass mobiles, they stood as stone figurines on the nightstand, the windowsill, the vanity.

Avery didn’t seem phased by this, nor by the photo that stood next to a particularly large sunflower made of wood. Like the petals of the flower, the woman had bright red hair. She also – much to Ed’s horror – had big brown eyes.

Ed’s eyes to be exact.

She was very young, in the photo at least, younger than Ed was now, maybe in her early twenties, and she smiled sweetly at the camera while wearing a lab coat over a tight sundress.

Meanwhile, Avery was smiling wildly with a determination that made Ed smile back at him. “After you, sir,” Avery said playfully, gesturing towards the door.

“Oh, why thank you!” Ed answered in the same tone of voice, tipping an imaginary hat before they both laughed again, running back to the kid’s room.

-

Moments later, Avery was dutifully drawing on Ed’s face. Unable to speak, Ed was startled by the intensity correct colors could have, by the shocking intensity of the smudged red lipstick on the Avery’s mouth, the blue eyeshadow, the green eyeliner.

“Look it!” Avery grinned, holding up a shimmering golden powder before dipping the brush into it.

“Oh!” Ed laughed, “The golden boy!” he sang, as Avery ran the brush over his nose.

“The golden boy!” Avery chimed in, singing along to their inside joke.

Ed felt his own eye being heavy with glue and smudgy mascara, Avery laughing, light and carefree, as he tried to keep his lashes from sticking together. “Stop laughing!” Ed heard himself say, laughing as well, before they both stopped instantly at the noise of a key being turned in the front door.

“Eddie, you home?” Someone called, the noise of the radio downstairs stopping suddenly, followed by someone walking up the stairs. “Don’t leave the radio on if you're not listening, please, it’s a waste of electricity,” a man said casually, as he pushed open the door, a greeting smile on his lips, a duffel bag hanging from his shoulders. “Oh, hiya Avery!”

Avery perked up. “Hi, Reid!”

He was definitely the man from the dream.

Now, in the light and without the mask, he didn’t look much like Ed at all. His eyes were green and his hair black, and while he was pretty tall and thin, he looked toned, like he was working out regularly.

He looked handsome, really.

Seemingly effortlessly handsome and impeccably dressed, like he belonged on a movie set in a Hollywood basement and not in a two-story family home with a child that he seemed way too young to be the father of.

Stepping behind Ed, he bent down, kissing his head, before ruffling through Avery’s dark curls. There was a spring in his step, as he clapped his hands together before kneeling down behind Ed and playing a quick and cheerful melody on the keyboard. “The fuck are you two up to?” he laughed, before sitting down next to them on the carpet, setting the bag down next to himself. “This is all wrong; this is not how you do it. Eddie, look here.”

He gently put two fingers on Ed’s chin, raising his face, before grabbing a stray packet of makeup wipes from Avery and running one over his face. Then, he started to apply the makeup again, slowly, skillfully, explaining what he did as he did it.

If either Avery or Ed himself were surprised by this move, neither of them let it show.

“Aves, you eating with us tonight? When’s your dad coming to pick you up?” he asked after a monologue about the best way to make body glitter stay on your face. Ed, who had just begun to relax into the touch, felt himself tense up.

“Dunno,” Avery shrugged, back to drawing.

“Alright, doesn’t matter. We'll see soon enough, won't we? What’cha drawing?” His dad asked, curiously.

“It’s this riddle-box-thing from school. Right now, it’s just a bunch of wooden shapes and stuff, like triangles and all that, but Mr. Sowerby says whoever can put it back together correctly so that it forms a solid cube wins a special price! So, I’m mapping it out.”

“Mr. Sowerby is a creep,” his dad pulled a face. “Sounds pretty fun, though. You gonna try to solve it too, Eddie?”

Ed felt himself shrug, staying silent. 

“He thinks he’s too stupid to do it.”

“Shut up, Avery!” Ed snapped, feeling heat rising in his cheeks.

“Stupid?” His dad frowned, almost seeming offended. “You’re not stupid.”

Slowly, without thinking, Ed was digging his fingernails into his arm. “Mr. Sowerby said that if my grades don’t get better-“

“Fuck Mr. Sowerby, that guy is a psycho and a half,” his father interrupted him. “Ed, listen,” his dad lifted his chin again, this time forcing him to look into his eyes. “You’re not stupid. You are very smart. One time she showed you how to do it, ONE time! And now you do it perfectly. Baby Blue… fuck, that takes brains! More brains than some stupid spelling bee, yes?”

Pausing for a moment, he seemed to lose his train of thought. “God, your hair looks crazy,” he mumbled, combing his fingers through it until he seemed satisfied. 

Then, both hands on Ed’s cheeks, he kissed his forehead. “You are my golden boy.”

At that, Ed saw Avery give him a look, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards, slightly lowering his head in an mocking imitation of bowing to him that made Ed grin and raise his eyebrows back at him importantly, raising his hand slightly as if he was waving to some peasants.

“Reid, guess what.”

“Mhm?”

“I thought about it and I've decided that when I grow up I wanna be an actor too.”

“Do you now?”

“Yes, like you and my dad!”

“Your dad’s a cop, Avery,” Ed heard himself say.

"So what? It's like a circus. 'It's showtime,' he always says." 

Ed’s dad laughed, applying some blush to Ed’s cheeks. “Pigs are the best actors of all, Eddie. I thought you of all people already knew that.”

-

A steady hand running the black paint over pale skin in a straight line, going on and on and on and on and on until it stopped. Microscopic pieces of dust tumbling through the air, sparkling in the light the mirror reflected from the dimly lit curtains.

Through tired eyes, Ed was watching the love of his life standing in front of the mirror over the fireplace, applying eyeliner with a steady hand.

Ed felt warm.

And he felt save.

Last night felt like it was far away, like all that counted was that they had both finally fallen asleep in the same bed, like that was just how things should be. Tangled in Oswald’s thick sheets, watching the other man, everything silent, not even crime or bad thoughts seeming to have woken up yet.

Although, according to the clock on Oswald’s nightstand, it was only 5.30am – way before Oswald’s usual wake-up time at 6.45am which Ed knew he was rigorously following for years now – the other man was already fully dressed and now apparently also finished with his makeup. Seeming satisfied, Oswald stepped back, flinching as his eyes caught Ed’s in the mirror.

“Morning, darling,” Ed said, trying to see how the pet name tasted on his tongue, satisfied as he felt it melt down his throat like hot chocolate.

Even Oswald seemed kind of touched by it, a fleeting smile appearing on his lips. “Good Morning,” he said, voice soft, probably the first words he had spoken today, turning around to face Ed. “You should go back to sleep.”

“Same goes for you; what are you doing up?” Ed asked, stretching lazily.

“Going to work,” Oswald shrugged.

“Nobody is at city hall this early; I bet not even Zsasz is awake yet. Actually, I bet he hasn’t even gone to bed yet.”

“I have a meeting.”

“With whom?”

“It’s boring.”

“It’s literally my job, Oswald.”

“Then you know how boring it is,” Oswald said innocently. “Hey, what did you do with your hair anyway?”

Although Ed knew the question was only meant to distract him, he immediately sat up straight and crawled to the end of the bed, getting on his knees to look at himself in the mirror, Oswald stepping to the side. His hair looked like it had been bleached in random places, some strands still the dark brown, others a light red. It also curled slightly, as it always did when he let it air dry. 

“Oh gosh,” Ed mumbled, not knowing how to feel. “Do you hate it?” he asked Oswald who was watching him.

“Obviously,” Oswald said, but chuckled amusedly.

Ed sighed. “I’ll fix it.”

“How?”

“I have no idea.”

Oswald laughed. “It’s not _that_ bad,” he said sweetly, leaning in to examine it closer. “I mean it kind of suits you,” he tried before Ed wrapped his arms around his chest, pulling him close, both of them tumbling back onto the sheets.

“Thank you for lying to me,” Ed said sincerely, cuddling him close and kissing his cheek. Oswald avoided his eyes but leaned into the touch.

“I love you,” Ed murmured against Oswald’s neck. And he really did.

He felt grounded, Oswald’s weight pressing him against the mattress.

He felt like they were the lucky ones, they were both alive, they were both in love.

He felt giddy, the aftermath of the dream still in his head, the silly thought that he couldn’t shake, that they were both part of a special club where everybody was loved by their parents, where people had been proud of them.

“I love you too,” he heard Oswald reply, feeling his nose pressed against his temple, his hands slowly enclosing him too. “You’re feeling better,” he said to Ed’s cheek.

“Hmh…” Ed mumbled,

Being so close to Oswald, Ed felt hyper-aware of his body, a tingling, almost electrical jolt running through his fingers as he ran them over the other man’s arms, his back. He noticed that he had unconsciously parted his lips, pressing them on Oswald’s temple before moving even closer, turning them both so they were facing each other. Then, blinded by desire, he pressed his lips onto Oswald’s neck, sucking at his pulse, letting his hand roam down his body.

How could his body ever be able to forget moments like this.

They should be etched into his mind, burned deep into his brain, unable to simply get washed away by a bit of cold air.

It felt unfair, almost cruel, that he would never be able to recreate the first time their bare skin had touched, the first time they both must have been so nervous, with trembling fingers and overpowering desire. He wanted desperately to make up for it, to get back the time they had lost, to relive the feeling, to rediscover it. Without thinking about it, he pushed the waistband of his own pajama bottoms down to his ankles and intertwined their legs, pushing his body close, kissing all over Oswald’s face, his cheeks, his nose, his forehead, his chin, only stopping as he noticed that Oswald had stopped to touch him.

They didn’t speak, Ed only looking back at him, not understanding, Oswald scooting back and sitting back up, glancing around the room as if trying not to look back at Ed, but his eyes inevitably wandering back to him every time.

Lying there, catching his breath while he felt his face heat up, Ed felt ashamed.

Ashamed that Oswald must know every inch of his body while he was a stranger to his.

Ashamed that he didn’t know how to deal with the fact that, after the exposure to the ice and the countless new bruises this had caused, his body had changed so severely, while Oswald must still know Ed’s old, healthy body so well and would instantly know every new imperfection, would recognize every deformity.

Quickly, he reached over, wrapping the blanket back over his body. Devastatingly enough, this seemed to make Oswald relax a little who was now seeming to be able to look back at him without being repulsed and having to look away. “I really have to go, Ed. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Ed answered, surprised at how normal his voice sounded despite the heat in his lower body and the hitch he felt wanting to escape his chest.

“Promise me something?” Oswald was shifting uncomfortably, getting up from the bed, his hands folded above his groin.

“Sure?”

“Stay in bed today? You’re still sick, I’ll tell the doctor to come by around noon and I’ll ask Olga to bring up some food. Please just…none of that running-around-town business.”

“You mean go back to my room?”

Oswald was silent for a moment. “You can stay here if you want to…,” he said quietly, almost stumbling over his words as he said them quickly, as if he was afraid he was going to change his mind midsentence. “Promise you’ll stay in bed?” Oswald added.

“Yeah,” Ed answered, and Oswald nodded, seeming relieved.

“I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Okay, see you,” Ed said, watching Oswald close the door behind him before drawing his legs up to his chest and burying his face in his hands, allowing the sobs that were trapped in his throat to escape.

-

Unsurprisingly, Olga had never actually showed up with the promised breakfast, so he decided he wasn’t necessarily breaking his promise to Oswald if he got up and checked if she had been murdered (not as unlikely as it should be) and/or if he would be able to find any eggs he could scramble up (more unlikely than you’d suspect, since Olga hated having him in – as she called it – ‘destroying’ his kitchen and frequently hid ingredients as well as kitchen utensils from him).

“I clean up vomit, I clean up mess in bathroom. Now you come and want food? When I supposed to do that? Laundry detergent staining marble tiles, having to scrub on my knees all morning! And my knees bad,” was Olga’s reply to his request.

Her scolding words still ringing in his ears, Ed wandered down the path that led away from the mansion, towards downtown Gotham.

This wasn’t breaking his promise to Oswald.

He was just going to pop into a bakery or something, just in and out, really quickly.

Oswald was never going to know anyway,

And even if he found out, Oswald would understand.

He’d encourage him, even.

He’d agree.

Five minutes.

Ten tops.

Maybe fifteen, he told himself as he walked past the bakery, his stomach audibly protesting as he took in the tooth-rotting scent of tarts and cookies.

Oswald wasn’t going to come home until late in the evening.

He would be long back by then.

It wasn’t a very long or hard walk.

Except he was sick.

And wearing pajamas.

And it was below 30 degrees.

Still, objectively, not too long.

The leather of his dress shoes was digging into his heels and bare ankles as he walked down street after street, deep in though.

In hindsight, getting dressed properly instead of just throwing on his shoes and a coat might have been a good idea.

But it didn’t matter because he’d be back soon.

And why get dressed if he was just going to go back to bed.

What if he met Barbara and her gang here?

Oswald hadn’t told him who had frozen him, and he had never asked. It was clear enough.

They had probably hired that Fries guy, broken him out of Arkham or wherever he was at the moment. He had always despised Butch. And Tabitha.

Cold and heartless people.

Going around and killing Oswald’s mother.

You just don’t do that.

Briefly he wondered how all of them had reacted at the news of his and Oswald’s relationship, if they had even told them. By now, he was sure they were more used to it than he himself was.

While he had felt fine at the mansion, unsurprisingly his head was starting to hurt again, his ears and nose burning from the cold, knowing they must already be bright red.

But he was only going to be gone for about half an hour.

He could get back under the warm blankets in Oswald’s bed after that.

As he passed it, he couldn’t bear to look at Mr. Sowerby’s house, wondering if they had found his dead body – or, rather, his head – yet, if anybody even searched for him anyway, if anybody cared.

Had he lived in a different town, had he not worked in law enforcement, he might feel comforted by the thought of a murder investigation, but he knew better than that. He was well aware (and had taken advantage of multiple times) the lengths of moral ambiguity Gotham’s cops were willing to go to if there was cash involved. Or drugs. Or sex. And if you weren’t named Thomas or Martha Wayne not even a James Gordon was going to stop and look for more than a couple of seconds, till the next homicide.

Once again, the street was dead silent.

No one outside, curtains drawn.

Surely, that must be unusual.

Even streets that had something to hide needed people to go outside to sell some drugs, do some sex-trafficking.

Maybe it was simply deserted.

Maybe no one lived here anymore.

But in that case, where were the squatters?

Or, on the other hand, the gentrifiers, the yuppies?

Suddenly, Ed spotted a little girl staring at him, pressed against the side of a house at the end of the street, turning away again as she saw him look back at her, not alarmed, more bored. Hoping he looked more like a curious upstanding citizen and less like a sex predator, he walked towards her and into the direction she had vanished in.

He found her in the backyard of what looked like a house that had burned down, the bricks tinted in a thick layer of black ashes, collapsed beams on the ground. In the yard, there was a debris of scattered and torn up books and furniture, the ground colored black with the occasional splatters of green grass growing back where the fire hadn't burned away all chance of new life.

The girl sat amidst about thirty other children of varying ages, who were sitting on the ground, strangely amidst at least sixty wooden crosses stuck in the earth, stretching across the backyard into the field behind the house.

Amongst the children, Ed recognized Matthew from yesterday, as well as some other familiar faces he didn’t know by name.

He thought about what to say, if anything at all, all too conscious of all of their eyes on him. It wasn’t that he was a shy person, necessarily, it was just that he was accustomed to saying the wrong thing and wasn’t all that keen on getting murdered by a bunch of little kids and preteens.

Instead, he opted to inspect the crosses, stepping closer. On each of them was carved one name, the wood already a dark green, wet through and rotting from the inside.

_Eleanor Brooks. 1939-1995._

_John Wright. 1958-1995._

This went on and on and on and on, name after name, born in 1952, 1937, 1962. Daniel Hughes, Russell Morgan, Emily Hill, Jack Hill.

Died in 1995. Every single one of them.

Maybe they died from the fire.

But how could that be possible.

Maybe they had tried to help.

But this was Gotham.

So maybe they had tried to loot.

But the house didn’t look worth looting, or dying for, for that matter.

“Hey,” Ed tried, turning to the kids. “You know what happened here?” He tried to sound relaxed. He failed. He sounded eager and creepy like a chemistry teacher latching on to the one kid in their class who sometimes knows the answer, telling themselves that this is the reason they haven't quit yet and making their whole identity depend on their success in life. 

The kids just stared at him, some raising their eyebrows, others looking away as if bored. All of them seemed agitated and – oddly – confused by him addressing them.

“I know you,” Matthew said finally.

“Uh, yeah, I guess. We met yesterday.”

“Are you wearing pajamas?”

Ed shrugged and Matthew nodded without any further comment as if proven a point and ready to rest his case.

“Why are all of you outside?” Ed asked stupidly, for the first time noticing that while the kids all had coats on, they were impractical, like they had been allowed to pick them out themselves with no regard for practicality. Matthew’s was a dark purple, shimmering in the light but also razor-thin, while the little girl’s was a silver biker jacket that looked horribly stiff and uncomfortable.

“School’s cancelled, somebody smoked the principle, now the cops are there,” the girl answered.

“Okay but why don’t you just play inside?”

She frowned. “They’re home. We have to wait till they go to work in the afternoon?!”

“Who? Your parents?”

The girl nodded with an expression that told him he was an idiot for asking.

“You scared of them?” He guessed.

Now it was her time to look confused. “What? Why would we?”

He shrugged, opening his mouth, but she spoke again. “If their work was cancelled, they wouldn’t be allowed inside either, that’s our time to use the house.”

“Yeah, sure,” Ed gave in, having no idea what she was talking about.

“You got money?” She changed the subject.

“These pajamas don’t have pockets.”

“Coats do.”

Ed wrapped his fingers around his wallet in his coat pocket, wishing he had brought his gun.

He looked around the crowd of kids, knowing he wouldn’t be able to outrun them but also really not sure about being willing to be robbed by them.

“You got a gun?” he tested, telling himself he might as well ask before having to run away with the grace of a chicken that has had its head cut off.

“No,” the girl replied.

“Knife?”

“No?”

“So, like, you kids are going to beat me up?”

“Huh? Nah.”

“Then…why would I give you my money?”

She looked confused, “We’re kids.”

“Yes?”

“You’re an adult.”

“I don’t think this is as convincing an argument as you think it is.”

She frowned, looking back to the others for support, but they didn’t seem to know what to say next either.

“Does this usually work?” Ed asked, curiously.

“The others can’t stand to even be in the same room as us. Or in the same house.”

“Not the teachers, surely,” Ed answered, frowning, looking at the houses on the street, feeling like there were dozens of people watching him. This hadn’t been like this in the school, though. For sure not. Although, he really hadn’t seen any other adult than Mr. Sowerby there.

“Not Mr. Sowerby,” the girl said. “He made some people not be afraid. But he’s dead now. Now all of them are scared.”

“What did you do? Did you kids kill someone? Did you kill Mr. Sowerby?”

“What? No! Nothing! It has always been like that!”

“So, if they’re scared of you, why don’t you just go inside and make them leave?”

She shrugged. “We feel sorry for them. Well, at least sometimes.”

“Mayor Cobblepot wasn’t scared of you yesterday,” Ed tried to find a gap in her logic, the phrase sounding oddly like he was bragging.

“He has killed like twenty people. He was in Arkham.”

Probably a lot more than twenty, Ed thought but let it slide, as well as the comment that he himself had killed people and been in Arkham too. “I don’t understand why they’d be scared of you. You’re kids.”

“Exactly.”

“Huh?”

“We’re kids.”

He shook his head. “I don’t-“

“Mabel, he doesn’t know about Blue,” a boy interrupted, rocking a baby in his arms.

“Everybody knows about Blue, idiot!”

“Stop talking to him, for all you know he’s another pig,” the boy snapped back at her and Mabel retreated to the others.

Ed watched them for a second, suddenly feeling very sorry for them, bored out of their minds and huddled together, freezing. Finally, he took his wallet out of his pocket before stepping closer, taking off his coat and laying it down on the ground in front of them, like an offering some food for a wounded animal.

“Wrap the baby in it,” he said, the kids only staring at him before he quickly walked away before they could also request his wallet, walking into the ocean of crosses.

_1942-1995._

_1956-1995._

_1937-1995._

What he found curious was that there were no kids among the dead.

Amidst the wooden crosses he found one actual gravestone. It was gorgeous, white marble with an engraved sunflower with red petals. _Rose Nashton_ , it read. _19 th June 1969- 27th January 1994. _

Next to it stood another wooden cross. _Reid Nashton. 1970-1995._

Ed was perplexed, for a second, just staring at the date of Rose’s death before he even realized there was another cross next to both of them. It was hardly a cross at all anymore, although it seemed like it had been replaced a few times over the years. On the cross were many mixed messages, some crude words etched into the wood as well as some hearts. On the grave lay a little 'bouquet' of daisies that looked like a child had put it together and put it there, while the cross looked flimsy and broken as if someone had kicked it.

_Edward Nashton. 1985-1995._

So he wasn’t Edward Nashton.

So this mystery had been solved after all.

But why had Mr. Sowerby thought he was Nashton when he must know that he was dead.

Kneeling down, Ed looked at the cross more closely as if trying to find a clue, but he found nothing other than more crude words mixed with expressions of adoration. Digging his fingers into the soil, he started digging without thinking about it.

He couldn’t feel the cold anymore.

He didn’t feel the dirt digging its way under his nails, thick with frost.

He didn’t feel the pain in his body anymore, numbed by the clouds in his head.

He had to see.

He had to know.

You can struggle with knowing who other people are, with having them betray you, having them lie to you.

You simply cannot struggle with knowing who you yourself are, where you come from, what you have done.

This was a sick joke.

Zsasz was going to jump out from behind a tree any second now.

A fake-out.

Nashton was going to turn out to be just some kid he had no connection to whatsoever.

Knees sliding before sinking deeper into the mud, staining the flannel beyond repair.

Sleeves pushed back; arms caked in dirt.

Glasses sliding down his nose, his back stretched as he dug deeper until his fingertips felt something wooden.

A casket which was buried way too shallow, only about three feet deep. Six feet deep is literally a saying, people.

“GCPD, freeze!” Someone yelled behind of him as he was trying to pry open the lid of the casket, the wood already loose and rotten, a splinter digging painfully in his finger.

This would all turn out to be a dream, surely. This couldn’t be real.

“I said freeze!” Someone grabbed his wrist, pulling him back, Ed struggling, edging his hand further in the space between the lid and the casket.

“Wait…Ed?”

The casket was going to be empty. There would for sure be nothing to see here. But if there was nothing, did that mean he was Edward Nashton? But if there was something in it, then who was he? 

Ed didn’t listen, forcing the lid open, the wood cracking and breaking into two large pieces, revealing the corpse – by now only burned bones – of a child.

Slowly, Ed stepped back, before stumbling into the arms of James Gordon.

-

“Yes! Oswald! Call Oswald!” Ed repeated for at least the third time, staring back at Harvey.

“He’s lost it, Jim. He’s completely lost it,” Harvey said in response, also for the third time, as if they were rehearsing a particularly tedious part of a play over and over again.

“Ed, what happened?” Jim asked, staring at Ed from outside of the holding cell. Ed glanced at the blanket they had given him but he had just thrown into the corner of the cell, crossing his arms, looking back at Jim through the metal bars.

“Don’t act like we’re friends, James. We are not,” he said, wishing terribly he had swallowed his pride because he was still caked in mud and freezing and he just really wanted that blanket.

“Neither are you and Oswald.”

Ed frowned, taking it as a snide remark about the romantic nature of his and Oswald’s relationship. “Very funny. Just call him, okay?! I don’t get why he has to bail me out anyway. I did nothing illegal.”

“Uh, grave robbing..?” Harvey interjected.

“I didn’t take anything, did I?”

“Desecrating a grave then, criminal trespassing, whatever the name for being a fucking perverted weirdo is.”

Ed pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just. Call. Oswald.”

At first, Ed was sure Oswald would be at the police station in a matter of minutes. But that didn’t turn out to be the case. It was normal though; he was a busy man. A busy man who also wasn’t there an hour later. Or two hours later.

Had he not watched Jim talk to Oswald on the phone, he would have assumed this was a sick joke of him and Harvey. But now he was just left waiting, sitting in the cell, watching other people coming and going while every singly member of the GCPD walked by and gawked at him and the big clock taunted him with every echoing ticking marking each passing second.

He was so hungry, his stomach felt like it was eating itself up.

Every second or so, he glanced at the blanket, lying there, mocking him.

Three hours in, Jim brought him a plastic cup full of tea. English breakfast – although the sun was setting already – the same brand of cheap and awful tea bags he still remembered them always having in the tea kitchen when he still had been working here. Cheap and flimsy, the string always breaking off when you tried to remove it from the mug.

It didn’t help with the hunger.

Yet, the taste was familiar, comforting.

Sitting on the hard, wooden bench, sipping the tea, Ed tried to fill his mind with only one thought, pushing all others aside: _You are overreacting_. He knew he was.

So what, some kid had died, had been buried years and years ago. They didn’t even have the same name. The only thing connecting them at all was some guy that had been killed.

So what, people get killed in Gotham all the time. Didn’t have to have anything to do with him.

_You are overreacting you are overreacting you are overreacting._

Every upcoming doubt, every question about Oswald’s whereabouts, every desperate try of recalling the smallest details of his dreams, he pushed aside.

 _You are overreacting_ , he told himself, whispered it to himself when the thoughts got too loud, keeping his gaze fixed on the clock.

Five hours in, Jim stood in front of the cell for a while, quietly looking at him. “Should I call someone else?” he interrupted Ed’s quiet singsong, Ed’s eyes taking a moment to adjust, as they focused back on him.

“He’ll come.”

_You are overreacting you are overreacting you are overreacting you are overreacting you are overreacting you are overreacting_

Six hours in, Jim asked him if he needed a doctor. Ed only shook his head, embarrassed that he apparently looked so weak, so pale, so pathetic.

“I just want to go home.”

_You are overreacting you are overreacting you are overreacting you are overreacting you are overreacting you are overreacting you are overreacting you are overreacting you are overreacting you are overreacting you are overreacting you are overreacting_

Seven hours in, his head pressed against the steel bars, his eyes were fluttering shut. He wasn’t repeating the words anymore. They hadn’t even sounded like words anymore in the end. All he could think of anyway was how hungry he was. How dry his mouth was. Yet, he would rather die right there than ask Jim or – god forbit - Harvey for help.

Had something happened to Oswald? 

Had he been in an accident?

Been kidnapped?

Killed?

From the police station outside of the holding cell: someone typing on the typewriter, crying babies, laughing adults, smells of alcohol and sweat. Jim Gordon’s voice, talking to an upset-looking young woman, seemed to be floating in from an alternate universe. Everything seemed wrong, like Ed had left the mansion and gotten lost forever. Like there didn’t even exist a map to guide him back to where he needed to go, like there existed only tiny pieces that were burnt and falling to ashes.

Over and over, thoughts kept playing in Ed’s head. _I have to figure this out_ and then, for the millionth time, _I can’t._

Instead, he felt his head spin, flashes of red hitting his eyes behind closed lids as a steady pain ran through his body.

He didn’t even fight it.

At this point, it felt welcome, like, while it was still pain, it was a different kind of pain, a change of scenery.

He recognized the outlines of the house he had just been in this morning. The one he had dreamt about.

Now, however, everything was wrong again.

Everything was black, tinged in darkness, only the wall in front of him shining in a bright neon green as if it had been painted in coat after coat of glow-in-the-dark paint.

Slowly at first, Ed felt his small body move towards it, colliding with it and then stepping back again and repeating the process.

Faster and faster he slammed himself against the wall as if trying to tear it down, as if trying to break through.

Pain flooded his body, his right shoulder at first, then his left.

His nose, his forehead, his knees, his legs, his arms, his torso one after the other starting to burn with pain.

Ed wanted himself desperately to stop, to just use the door that was right next to him, unbolted and unlocked, until he realized he wasn’t trying to get out at all. He was just hurting himself for the sake of hurting himself, numbing himself.

“Fucking stop it right now!” A strong hand grabbing his arm, pulling him back. He himself wretching, clawing at the hand, desperately. “Why are you doing this, stop it! Stop it!” The man - unmistakeably his father, but looking so strange with all the shapes and colours floating around him - yelled, trying to hold him in place. But he wasn’t even trying to fight his father, he was kicking his feet against the wall, digging his fingernails in his own flesh, trying to hurt himself. As his dad put his other hand around his wrist, pulling him closer, he looked back up at him with wild eyes. “Eddie, please.” He sounded exhausted, but Ed started to scream, like an animal, hitting his head against his own hand.

Suddenly, Ed’s father seized him around the waist, lifting him up and carrying him to the door, opening it easily - the door unlocked - and setting Ed down on the sidewalk, naked feet on the concrete, cold wind floating through the thin flannel of his pajamas, his shirt fluttering open in the cold air, the waistband of his pants digging into the flesh over his hips, up way too high.

“You wanna leave? Go ahead, knock yourself out!” His dad said, turning around as he reached the door frame again, looking back at him. “No one’s forcing you to be here. I want you to stay. But I won’t force you to do anything. Don’t act like you don’t know that.”

So Ed stood there. 

Quiet, for the first time, his throat feeling like it was filled with hot blood from the screaming, his whole body throbbing, his heart pulsating against his chest.

And he looked down the street.

Not even a neon wall.

Just darkness.

As he walked back into the house, he felt calmer. Everything still seemed wrong, but in a different way. Instead of everything being black, everything was tinted in the wrong colors, the fridge bright green, the carpet orange. His father sat at a purple kitchen table, “That’s what I thought,” he said before he looked up, extending his arms, Ed walking closer, allowing them to enclose him. His father hugged him tightly, setting him down on his lap. After a moment, Ed put his arms around him, pressing his face into his chest.

“Sweetheart, I know you don’t like it,” his father started, voice soft, hand softly rubbing Ed’s back. “But we all have me make sacrifices for this family. You can stop if you want, alright? You want to stop?”

Ed felt himself relax as he heard the words, nodding against his chest.

“Alright. Hell, then you can stop!” A long pause followed before he spoke again. “Of course, in that case, I will have to go to jail,” his father went on, hand still moving up and down Ed’s back. “And you too, obviously. That is if they don’t kill us first.”

“Why?” Ed’s voice was horse from the screaming. “That’s not fair…”

“You know, Eddie, life isn’t fair,” his father shrugged, scooting back a little so he could look Ed in the eyes. “But if this is really what you want, I’ll do it. Because I love you. And that’s what families do, they make sacrifices for each other. Isn’t that, right?”

Ed felt his father’s eyes on him, filled with so much hope that he desperately wanted to answer, but he couldn’t, a painful lump burning in his mouth. Instead, he stared at a button on his shirt, trying to control his tremoring chin, the painful heat behind his eyelids,

“Also…if you don’t do it. He’s probably going to do it to Avery…” his father added after a while, Ed glancing up, seeing the muscles clenching around his jaw line, his tone growing more impatient.

“Maybe I can -…maybe I can try again,” Ed answered, barely a whisper after taking a few heavy breaths and thick swallows to rid himself of the pain in his throat. He found that his voice sounded toneless, anxious, but also determined.

The corner of his father’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Really? You mean it?”

He nodded.

“Oh, what a good kid you are! My golden boy! Just watch the TV like I told you. Try to enjoy it!”

Ed stayed silent and only nodded again, his heart thudding dully in his chest.

“Right.” His dad set Ed back down again. “Get back in there, champ. And no more of this screaming nonsense, you’re acting like a fucking psychopath,” he said, before nodding his head towards the cellar door, Ed slowly walking towards it, before walking back down the stairs, his limbs feeling heavy and lethargic when – just ten minutes ago – they had felt so alive, so full of fire when he had hit the wall.


End file.
